Friday, 30 November 2007

After the thanksgiving re-run and special edition of the Mind, Body and Soul show, with contributions from our outer space friends concerned about how they can develop their bodies, things returned to normal this Thursday at 3pm GMT, (8am MST), for Real Coaching Radio’s International Show.

Host Coach Steve Toth and myself Co-Host Drª Venerina Conti talked about Criticism and Judgment. What they are. What their distinction is. How they are defined and how we use them against ourselves, others and our relationships towards others.

Not all criticism is bad. There is such a thing as constructive criticism, which can be beneficial for our own self-improvement.

When we persistently stand in judgment of ourselves and persistently criticise ourselves we become our own worst enemies. We stop seeing the wood for the trees. We run ourselves into the ground until one day we find we have no self-confidence left. So, we retreat into our comfort zone and avoid anything challenging.

Do we judge others because of our own fears? Do we criticise others because it makes us feel better about who we are or because it makes us feel superior to another human being? The truth is strip away what we do, our roles in society, our status and the whole of the physical world, we are all equals.

Our souls are pure love. Only when we acknowledge this love for ourselves will we find that we no longer need to judge or criticise because everything we need to feel good about ourselves is contained within us already. When we love ourselves, we can love others and be accepting of them the way they are.

The time and energy that we spend on judging and criticising is misplaced time and energy that we could be spending on something constructive, creative and productive that pushes us forward in our lives.

How do you react to judgment and criticism? Find out how you can deal with it without letting it affect you. Listen to our live broadcast from Thursday 29th November on Mind, Body and Soul at Real Coaching Radio.

Monday, 26 November 2007

As Human beings we are naturally creatures of habit. The older we get the more willing we seem to be to find a comfort zone and stay in it. We have a tendency to procrastinate by getting stuck into our daily routines which somehow have a way of overwhelming us. Days, months and years pass us by, in what seems like a bat of an eyelid, until one day we wake up and realize that we haven’t achieved half the things we hoped for, or dreamt about, when we were younger.

Does this sound familiar to you? Now why should that be?

I would like you to take a moment and think back to your childhood days when you created your imaginary worlds and acted them out in the real world. Think about how you felt. My guess is that back then anything was possible. You didn’t stop to think about the consequences. You didn’t have any fears or doubts. There was nothing to hold you back. You were the sole creator of everything.

How many times did you fearlessly do something like climb up a tree and get stuck? You didn’t worry about getting stuck. You just went ahead and climbed the tree. You only worried about getting down when the need arose. Each event occupied its own time and space. You never thought that far ahead. You took one step at a time and crossed each bridge when you came to it. You never thought about failing or having failed. The aim was to climb the tree which you succeeded in doing.

So, why should things be any different when you become an adult?

The blessing of being an adult is that we have an acquired sense of knowledge from our experiences that help us make more appropriate judgments. The curse of this knowledge though is that we let it hold us back by misusing it to create possible unfounded fears in our minds.

Lets look at the example of our tree. As adults who want to climb the tree, we stand there considering how we are going to get down before we even start to think about how to climb it. Our immediate thoughts are: “What if I get stuck”?, “Who will rescue me if I get stuck”?, “If someone has to rescue me, they will think I am an idiot - at my age - climbing a tree and getting stuck”.

If we haven’t begun climbing yet, how can we possibly know whether there will be a clear way for us to get down?.

What’s happened here? Well, technically, we’ve had a goal shift without even realizing it. Instead of climbing the tree, our goal has now become getting down. We stand there, before the tree, having a series of negative thoughts and internal dialogues with ourselves, until we are completely dissuaded from our original goal. Instead of thinking positively about creative ways we could get down, i.e. by following the same path we use to climb, we choose to persuade ourselves that we cannot do it - full stop. So, we give up. We walk away from the tree and don’t even make an attempt at it.

The problem is though that when we have walked away, we still have a lingering bitter taste of disappointment in ourselves. It’s another goal gone by the way side. It’s another negative self-judgment, which is now stored in our personality profile. It’s another element we add to our failure list.

So, what happens next? Well slowly but surely, as we accumulate negative thoughts about ourselves and about the things we failed to do, we start to shy away from things we would like to do simply because we think we know we are going to fail. We make no attempt at anything that will disappoint us again. We do not trust ourselves anymore. We become insecure and lose best part, if not all, of our self-confidence. So, we only apply ourselves to the realm of things that, (we think), we know for sure that we can succeed at. We create a world around us that is safe and stay locked up in it.

Essentially, we have unwittingly and yet willingly become our own worst enemy by creating an image of ourselves as failures, as losers and as people who are not blessed with special capacities like others who seem to succeed at everything they do. The truth is that we are not giving ourselves a chance. From thereon in, we seem to prefer to shut out any opportunity that we think goes beyond our readily misconstrued abilities and we sadistically deny our true capacity for achievement any benefit of the doubt.

The end result?

We unconsciously or consciously, as the case may be, resent ourselves. We resent those around us because we love to lay blame on them for our shortcomings. We overeat to compensate and then hate ourselves for being overweight. It’s a classic vicious circle in an ongoing spiral. We are unfulfilled and dissatisfied with our job because it does not align with our original goals. We fail to make promotions in our jobs because, although we believe we are up to it, our external behavior tells the world otherwise. We have difficulties in our relationships because, in this frame of being, we choose partners who either over-compensate for us, which in the long term makes us feel completely worthless or under-compensate for us, who in the short term makes us feel better about ourselves.

As human beings we are masters of disguises. We accommodate ourselves and just plod along accepting second or third best instead of the best for us. One day though, when we least expect it, who we truly seeks revenge as it demands to be unleashed. The question is: Are you really going to wait until that happens or are you going to take action now?

It is not enough to just hope, wish or think that something is going to happen. There is an Italian motto that says: “Dio aiuta chi si aiuta”, which translated means: “God helps those who help themselves”. So, you need to take action. You need to take responsibility for yourself in the here and now if you want the future to be different. Mahatma Ghandi once said: You must be the change you wish to see in the world.

Search deep in your soul and find out how you got to be where you are. Ask yourself what it is that holds you back. Put them in groups. Is it money? time? fears?Name them all. Write them down. Acknowledge them. Then write down next to each one all of the subgroup excuses like: “I don’t earn enough”, “I work too many hours”, “I am useless at drawing”, whatever , but be sure to write them all down until you have no excuses left to write. By writing them down you are taking a step in being willing to face them. By facing them, you can work through them and then let them go.

Dig a little deeper into yourself and decide what it is exactly that you did, or failed to do in your life, that was so bad you cannot forgive yourself. Write them down. Acknowledge them. Face them and learn to forgive yourself. Tell yourself that you forgive yourself and love yourself. Tell yourself that you are sorry, that you made a mistake and that you are willing to start over. Commit to the words you tell yourself.

Then, write down all the things you have ever wanted from life. Have them clear in your mind and on the paper in front of you. Start to think of ways you can make extra time, extra money, be better at whatever it is you want. Write them down. Write down the qualities you love about yourself even the ones you lost somewhere along the way.

Set yourself realistic daily, weekly, monthly and yearly goals. Write them down in a journal and after each day or each week keep a written track of your progress. Learn to prioritize. Learn to manage your time better. It does not matter if you have to carry some of your goals over from one day to the next. Do not be hard on yourself because of it. Just know that you will whatever it is the following day. The important thing is to keep moving forward.

Make your end goal climbing the tree and not worrying about what the end result will be. As long as you are moving forward towards what you want, you cannot fail. As long as you are changing your views about you, you are already a winner. Doing something is better than nothing and by doing something you will begin to see a turn around in your world. Nobody can fail when they are doing their best. Praise yourself for your achievements and do not judge them by anyone else’s standards. You are you and you are unique.

Live in the preparation of today and the tomorrow will come by itself.

In a continuum from last Thursday’s topic of conversation on the Mind, Body & Soul show at Real Coaching Radio about the “I’m not good enough” syndrome and how it holds us back in life, this week Host Coach Steve Toth and myself, Co-Host Dtª Venerina Conti, talked about the subject of “Fear”.

What is fear? How many types of fears are there? What are you afraid of? How do you deal with your fears? How are you held back by your fears? How can you overcome them and finally achieve what really matters to you.

Did you know that fear is one of the biggest killers in the world? According to an American study, carried out some time ago, 80% of people who were bitten by snakes did not die through the presence of venom in their system. Rather, they died from elevated quantities of adrenalin that caused them to suffer a heart attack.

There are many types of fear. Fear of aging, fear of death, fear of failure, failure of not getting the desired job, fear of success, fear of losing control, fear of not seeming appropriate, fear of not fitting in, fear of rejection and fear of losing love among others. There is even such a state as fear of fear.

The question is how does one judge failure and success? How do you judge it and subsequently how do you judge yourself because of it?

If you ceased to judge yourself negatively and stopped having negative internal dialogues with yourself and just took a quiet moment to search inside, you may find that almost all of your fears are just states of mind that you have created and turned into your own reality.

However, if you scratch past the surface and delve deeper in your inner being, you will probably find that most of your fears have no real foundations nor can they really be justified.

Listen in to our broadcast on the Real Coaching Radio widget and find out how you can begin to look at your fears, acknowledge them and finally learn to let go of them.

Thursday, 15 November 2007

On Wednesday 14th November, Host Coach Steve Toth of Real Coaching Radio interviewed Mr Richard Brinton about his book “The Slavers”. Myself, co-Host of the Mind, Body and Soul show, Drª Venerina Conti, was honoured to be present at the interview for two main reasons:

I am priviledged to be on the front cover of Richard’s bookRichard has been a wonderful friend of mine for a couple of years now.

A part from Richard Brinton giving us a sneak preview into his new book, “The Slavers”, the interview was an amazing hour long journey that unfolded the global history of slavery spanning roughly 6,000 years. From the Greeks to the Romans, from the Trans-Atlantic to nowadays, why was slavery so popular? What conditions did these people suffer? How did it affect whole civilizations?

Did you know that there is more white slavery going on in the world today than the Trans-Atlantic slave trade ever had even at the height of its peak?

Did you know that slavery is not a situation that is only related to African or black people?

Did you know that child slavery is still in existence nowadays?

How financially viable was slavery? And how is it so nowadays still?

Richard had listeners’ full attention as he shared his profound knowledge of this underlying theme in his new book. A theme that we should all pay attention to as it affects us directly. The way we live, the way we are towards others and the way we perceive our past could all be changed if we listen closely and dig a little deeper.

If you missed this amazing interview, look through the Real Coaching Radio widget and scroll down to “THE SLAVERS – Richard Brinton” and listen in. It’s a story as old as time and a lesson that we still have not learnt. Truly an interview not to be missed.

Friday, 9 November 2007

Thursday 8th November, Real Coaching Radio’s Host Coach Steve Toth and myself Co-Host, Holistic Psychologist, Dr. Venerina Conti brought to our listeners a topic that is at the heart of many people’s failures in life and that is the “I’m not good enough syndrome”.

Where does that syndrome come from? Are you willing to find out? Are you ready to face it and move on?

You do realize that the only person stopping you from becoming who you want to be and doing what you want to do in life is you, don’t you?

Are you one of the millions of people who think that they are not good enough just because you think you are not pretty enough or clever enough or thin enough or whatever fears, doubts and issues that may lay secretly in the back of your mind and ingrained in your soul?

Have you ever stopped to really think about whether these complexes are truly yours or whether they are just others’ opinions that you have come to accept as reality. Remember, the more someone says something to you, the more you think about it, the more you think about it, the more you believe it and soon, before you know it, you have acquired a new reality in your subconscious upon which you base your actions and create the world around you.

This is not who you are though. Who you are is a spiritual being with the same capacities as anyone else in the world. The only difference between you and a successful person is that the successful person acts upon his world and does not let the world just act upon him.

Forgive yourself your harsh judgments. Forgive others because perhaps they knew no better. Everyone creates their own reality based on their own circumstances and influences in life. There is no such thing as a perfect life. Everyone has baggage. The important thing is how you deal with the baggage that you are carrying.

If you cannot love yourself, forgive yourself and be at one with yourself, the chances are you will not succeed in having successful relationships with others. Look deep into the inner you and discover even the most painful of content. Let it rise to the surface, analyse it, cherish the lesson that may be contained within it and then let it go.

Create new realities for yourself based on what you love about you, the things you are best suited for and what your passions are in life. Give yourself all the validation you need to restore the belief that you can be and you will be. Once you restore this self-confidence you will find that the only limiting factor is your own imagination.

Listen in to our recorded show on Mind, Body and Soul and find out more about how you can learn to let go and forgive yourself and others.

Thursday, 8 November 2007

For those of you who know me and have been following my posts lately, you will know that I am now collaborating with Real Coaching Radio and co-hosting the International Mind, Body & Soul show, along with Coach Steve Toth, that goes out live every Thursday at 3pm GMT, 9am MST.

Well, today I’m not here to talk to you about our mind, body and soul show, although I would like to remind everyone to tune in for today’s topic: “I’m not good enough”. The question is .... “Says who”?

Today I am posting because I am Honoured and Privileged to make a long awaited announcement.

The Slavers is not for the faint of heart, for sure, but it fulfils the promise of an adventure that sails right into the heart of the reader. It will keep you wanting to find out more as the characters come alive and enact the scenes, in your mind, as if you were watching a movie.

It is this very individualised style of writing that makes Richard’s book “The Slavers” a book that you will not be able to put down. Love, intrigue, sensuality, exotic tones and capturing moments across high tides, that lead to foreign lands, is Richard’s own unique recipe for what is set to be the next best seller in 2008.

Want to find out more? Got any questions you would like to ask Richard?

Then come join us on a journey that takes us back in time ....to the days of the slave trade and life as we will see it through the eyes of the author. Tune in to Real Coaching Radio on Wednesday 14th November at 3pm GMT, 8am MST, and listen to our exclusive interview with Richard Brinton himself.

..... And .... Real Coaching Radio and I will give a FREE copy of the first volume of Napoleon Hill's "Think and Grow Rich" to each and every reader and/or listener who can tell us who is featured on the cover of Richard's book. So check it out, send me a note "here" and grab your copy while it's still FREE.

We are launching a challenge to you, our listeners. How many of you out there can actually answer the question: “Who are you”? … Are you how you identify yourself in your societal role? Are you who you envisage yourself to be as defined by others? Have you lost track of who you are?

Regardless of your answer, whoever you are is a very deep and personal matter but we all share one common trait, our souls derive from the same place … from the One and only Conscious Creative being.

Egdar Cayce believed that our soul’s purpose for being here, in the physical being, is to learn, grow and develop so it may earn it’s place next to the creature. We are all born with the same potential for being. We all have our innate connection to our spirit and that of the Universal Being.

Somehow though, we lose this sense of connection as we grow older due to whatever may influence us such as: educational systems, cultural integration, societal stereotyping and so forth. It takes for something drastic to happen in one’s life for the spiritual awakening to re-occur and for us to, once again, be in touch with our Inner Self and the Higher Being.

It all seems to be about extremes rather than integration. Some people experience the separate duality of spiritualism and the physical. Some people only experience either one or the other. For a person to be whole and complete it is necessary to find a means of integrating the two extremes in our modern world. This can be done by focusing ourselves and giving equal attention to all parts of who we are. The rewards are phenomenal. Don’t wait for something drastic to happen to you before you awaken.

Life is not a survival. Life does not have to a be hard. Life is for creating and experiencing. We are the sole creators of us, of our own circumstances and the world we surround ourselves with. Change requires action on our part. If we do nothing, nothing will happen.

We all construe our own realities but the truth is that there is no one singular absolute reality. There is no one singular absolute truth. There are multiple realities and multiple potential realities that we all have the abilities to create. The only limiting factor in creating the you and the life that you want is you and your imagination. How far are you prepared to go? How much are you prepared to put into it? Are you willing to face your own fears in order to create a new reality?

As long as we are alive, as long as we have desire to and as long as we are willing to, we can change anything and everything around us. If you cannot do it on your own then you could seek the guidance of a professional Coach.

Real Coaching Radio offers 7 Professional Coaches in 7 Professional areas of Life Balancing. Email Coach Steve Toth at realcoachingradio@msn.com for more information.